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THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 
A NEW YEAR'S SERMON 
BY WILLIAM M. IYINS * ® 




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The Soul of the People 


A NEW YEARNS SERMON 


BY 


WILLIAM M. IVINS 




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THE CENTURY CO. 


NEW YORK 


1906 



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Copy 2 

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY WILLIAM M. IVINS 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Comes Received 
MAR 30 1306 

-Copyright Entry 

CLASS CL XXc - No ' 



D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON 



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The Soul of the People 

A NEW YEARNS SERMON 

W e who are by temperament opti- 
mists, and by inclination students of 
past and present, find a ringing shib- 
boleth in this line of the late Arthur 
Hugh Clough: " Better than is to-day 
has never been." It is in this spirit and 
from this point of view that I have 
chosen to talk to you to-night about 
"the soul of the people," meaning 
thereby our own people, — its essential 
characteristics, its national personal- 
ity, — that somewhat, not the Nation, 
which nevertheless dominates and con- 
trols the Nation, and is its ultimate 
expression and manifestation. 
Now the soul of a man is a force, a 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

power, a spirit, a something that can- 
not be seen or heard, or weighed, or 
measured, or touched with the hand ; - 
and yet, except the great uncontrol- 
lable forces of nature, it is the most 
potent entity, the most indubitable 
thing, in the world. Call it soul, spirit, 
character, temperament, personality, 
or what you will, it is for every indi- 
vidual man something unlike that of 
every other individual man, and de- 
termines and constitutes his ultimate 
self. It is the man himself as distin- 
guished from the man itself. It trans- 
lates and interprets the physical man 
to the world. 

And just as there is in this sense an 
individual soul and an individual psy- 
chology, so each race, each people, each 
nation, has a psychical individuality, 
a soul of its own, different from that 

2 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

of any other racial or national soul; 
resembling others in one respect, dif- 
fering from them radically in another 
respect, but constituting the spirit and 
the temper of the race or the people, 
and being its expression to the rest of 
mankind, — a separate part of "that 
Unity, that Over-soul, within which 
every man's particular being is con- 
tained and made one with all other." 
Bismarck, in the fulness of wisdom, un- 
derstood the value of the knowledge 
of this, and declared that for the states- 
man "it is as essential to know the 
characters of nations as to know their 
interests." 

This national personality, or spirit, 
if you will, like the spirit or person- 
ality of the individual, changes the 
moral portrait of a nation from youth 
to age, takes on new aspects, and 
3 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

throws off old ones — is, in fact, in a 
state of eternal becoming, a perpetual 
growth, particularly among a people 
destined to receive, and obliged to as- 
similate, millions of aliens in every de- 
cade. It is at all times infinitely illusive 
in its last detail ; but at all times, to the 
keen observer, to the honest, undeluded 
and truthful student, appreciable in 
its main lineaments, and possessing 
enough of definition to permit of ade- 
quate description. It is the result of 
the whole life of the people, — not of 
one generation, but of all generations, 
for "the soul looketh steadily forward, 
creating a world before her, leaving 
worlds behind her. She has no dates, 
nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, 
nor men. The soul knows only the 
soul ; the web of events is the flowing 
robe in which she is clothed." 

4 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

If you were to ask me, What is 
America ? I should say, in answer, The 
whole body of living Americans, and 
all the Americans who have gone be- 
fore, from the beginning. The term 
"American People" means not only 
the Americans of to-day, but those of 
yesterday. The story of our national 
character is the history of our entire 
national achievement and methods of 
achievement. America consists not 
only of the living men and women, 
but of all the noble dead, of the great 
captains of the Revolution, of the fa- 
thers of the Constitution, of the soldiers 
of the war for union, and disunion as 
well, — of all the fine and brave spirits 
that have lived on our soil, and whose 
souls go marching on in our history, 
still dominating and still shaping it 
from their glorious graves. 

5 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

To understand the soul of our peo- 
ple, to know it adequately, as you and 
I will never know it, involves a know- * 
ledge of all institutions, all customs, 
all habits, all tendencies; of laws, of 
economics, of vices, of virtues, of im- 
perfections and perfections, — a know- 
ledge which no individual can possibly 
acquire : and yet, even within the lim- 
its of our mental grasp and possibili- 
ties, we can distinguish those traits 
which are significant of our national 
spirit, can see the drift of change, study 
the tendencies, mark the dangers, 
make precise the problems, and sug- 
gest the remedies that are involved in 
keeping that national spirit true to it- 
self, in maintaining it on lines making 
always towards perfection, making al- 
ways for true greatness, for worthi- 
ness in world leadership. Emerson asks, 
6 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

"Who can tell the grounds of his know- 
ledge of the character of the several 
individuals in his circle of friends ?" and 
he answers, " No man. Yet their acts 
and words do not disappoint him." 
And so it is with our national char- 
acter. We cannot tell the grounds of 
our knowledge of it, and yet we know 
it, and we shall not be disappointed 
in it. 

And what is this America, to the 
study of the soul of which we are go- 
ing to devote ourselves ? It was no ac- 
cident, the discovery by Columbus of 
this new world. It was inevitable, and 
the continent would have been found 
precisely the same by Cabral in 1500, 
if Columbus had not discovered the is- 
lands a few years before. It was bound 
to come out in the roaring loom of 
time, and the time had come. Up to 
7 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

then the great mid-sea was thought 
the centre of the world, and for at least 
two thousand years the Mediterra- 
nean and its basin had determined the 
whole course of western history; but 
the Mediterranean period in history 
was to end by the discovery of Amer- 
ica, and the Atlantic period was to 
begin, — for the world had already out- 
grown the Mediterranean limit. 

The new world was to be virgin soil, 
to which would be transferred the peo- 
ple and civilization of Europe, practi- 
cally without regard to race, tradition, 
custom, or temperament, to be fused 
into a new synthetic people, free to 
mingle their blood, and, under the im- 
pulse of new aspirations, to beget a 
new civilization unlike any other that 
the world had known. It is the thing 
toward which Europe had been grow- 

8 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

ing, for which Europe had been de- 
veloping, and it presented the only 
perfect possibility for new racial de- 
velopment and a new world spirit. 
America was needed as the rectifica- 
tion of Europe and the culmination 
of civilization under the regime of 
Freedom — and Europe is inexplicable 
in the divine order, except as culmi- 
nating in America. Out of it all there 
was to come a new people, with a soul 
of its own, possessing its own phy- 
siognomy, its own complexion, its 
own temperament; a living soul, it 
would become in time full of heredi- 
tary passions, as well as full of hered- 
itary aspirations, — a soul that flashes 
in our history like the phosphorescent 
sea about the wake of a great ship. 

The colonies were to implant the seed 
of individualism, and with it a certain 
9 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

seed of lawlessness, which should ul- 
timately result in complete revolt and 
national independence. The first cen- 
tury of our national life was to be de- 
voted to the struggle for national unity 
rather than to the struggle for liberty. 
We were to accomplish first a conti- 
nental oneness, to assure forever our 
national life — that being the primary 
trait of the century's development, the 
struggle for the more perfect liberty 
of the individual being subordinate to 
this, precisely as, in the terms of our 
Declaration of Independence, "lib- 
erty" is named after and not before 
"life." 

At the end of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, we found ourselves then in this 
position, — that we occupied the con- 
tinent from ocean to ocean, and practi- 
cally the entire temperate zone from 
10 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

north to south. Over this vast territory 
there rules one single constitution, 
with one system of laws, one language 
— the largest territory in the world of 
which these things can be said. It is oc- 
cupied by a new race made up of infi- 
nite crosses of progressive peoples, not 
held in mortmain by the past, but with 
its face turned resolutely to the future. 
It has the widest possible community 
of interests, operating over a continen- 
tal territory under conditions of abso- 
lute free trade, bound together by a 
common history, a common literature, 
a common political purpose, in perfect 
communication over the whole im- 
mense field through a press breathing 
a common spirit, and with the most 
perfect system of transportation and 
communication by steam and electri- 
city in the world. Such a national unity, 
11 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

such perfect community of popular in- 
terest and purpose and aspiration over 
so great a territory, constituting so sin- * 
gle and so unprecedented a neighbor- 
hood, — a veritable continental neigh- 
borhood, answering in unison from end 
to end at every vital touch, — is like 
so many other things American, — a 
thing wholly new in the world, and 
wonderfully meaningful. 

Our people has, moreover, through- 
out the greater part of its history, been 
a peaceful people, wholly unsympathe- 
tic to the spirit of militarism. In this 
it has differed from the Old World, 
as it does in so much else, for in Eu- 
rope, down to the Peace of Westpha- 
lia, the normal state of society was the 
state of war, whereas here the normal 
state has always been, and, thank God, 
still continues to be, the state of peace. 
12 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

The earliest manifestation of the 
American Spirit came from the Puri- 
tan and the Cavalier, and it was a good 
spirit, born of the reading of the Bible, 
and the Book of Common Prayer, and 
the Elizabethan dramatists, and of 
Milton and of Locke. It was a col- 
onizing spirit, which pushed farther 
and farther to the west and south, un- 
til the whole land was covered. But 
for many decades, while theoretically 
hospitable to all the world, we re- 
mained a more or less exclusive and 
isolated people, for in the history of 
immigration into America, this is to 
be noted, that it is divided into three 
periods — the first one that of the early 
comers, followed by a long interval, 
let us say from 1700 to 1848, during 
which immigration played a smaller 
part in the determination of our na- 

13 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

tional psychology ; and then from 1848 
to date, a new and tremendous incom- 
ing, a veritable transplanting of Eu- 
rope, which has so modified the char- 
acter of our people and of our national 
life as to leave the old controlling 
Puritan and Cavalier strain something 
to be sought for historically rather 
than to be felt intimately and actively. 
Our country presented every vari- 
ety of natural gift, and our Constitu- 
tion offered every temptation to men 
of breadth and boldness. Everything 
favored our becoming the final re- 
adjuster in the history of the peoples, 
with practical immunity for a century 
and a half from outside interference, 
while the bone of our character was 
setting, with steady progress, with 
unbroken evolution, with final culmi- 
nation of continental and national 

14 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

unity, with room for everything and 
for every one in all possible trades and 
in all possible professions. Thus, with 
society built up upon the principle of 
peace, for the last half century we 
have been transplanting Christendom 
and becoming the direct and the sole 
heir of that Welt Geist which is "the 
inherited collective wisdom of the 
world." History has demonstrated that 
the work of America is to remake the 
world, and the question I ask you 
to-night is, "What character we are 
bringing to, what character we are 
building up for, the performance of 
this task?" 

That America fills and colors the 
atmosphere of all civilization, that it 
is in the universal air, is not to be 
doubted. It is impossible, for instance, 
to say how much France owed to us 

15 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

more than a hundred years ago, or how 
much Russia owes to us now, and in- 
finitely more difficult to tell what Eng- ^ 
land owes to us and has owed us from 
the beginning. We have not become 
a world power to-day merely, because 
we have been a world force from the 
first coming of the Puritan, the Dutch- 
man, and the Virginian; but to-day 
our greatness is demonstrated in our 
vast population, our inexhaustible na- 
tional resources, our inconceivably tre- 
mendous sources of wealth, all that go 
to make up the most powerful state 
in the world. But what is the character 
that is to wield our greatness for our 
own national well-being or disaster, 
and for the welfare or disorder of the 
world? 

Our world position brings with it 
duties ; and involved in these duties is 
16 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

that on the part of every serious Amer- 
ican of knowing, first, of their exis- 
tence, and then, of understanding the 
spirit that is brought to their perform- 
ance. As a very clever English writer 
has said, we have, for a century past, 
drawn to ourselves, by an irresistible 
attraction, "the boldest, the most mas- 
terful, and the most practically intelli- 
gent of the spirits of Europe;" just as, 
by the same law, we have "repelled the 
sensitive, the contemplative, and the 
devout." We have "sifted the nations" 
— and having said this he continues: 
"It is impossible not to recognize 
that the destinies of Europe are closely 
bound up with those of this country; 
and that what is at stake in the de- 
velopment of the American Republic 
is nothing less than the success or 
failure of Western civilization (mean- 
17 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

ing thereby all European as well as 
all American civilization). Endowed, 
above all the nations in the world, with 
intelligence, energy, and force, un- 
hampered by the splendid ruins of a 
past which, however great, does but 
encumber, in the old world, with fears, 
hesitations and regrets the difficult 
march to the promised land of the fu- 
ture, combining the magnificent en- 
thusiasm of youth with the wariness 
of maturer years, and animated by a 
confidence almost religious in their 
own destiny, the American people are 
called upon, it would seem, to deter- 
mine, in a preeminent degree, the form 
that is to be assumed by the society of 
the future. Upon them hangs the fate 
of the Western world. And were I an 
American citizen, the thought would 
fill me, I confess, less with exulta- 

18 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

tion than with anxious and grave re- 
flection. "* 

Let us heed the lesson, and in no 
spirit of exultation, but gravely and 
reflectively, let us look the people in 
the face, seek to know its soul, mea- 
sure its strength and its weaknesses, 
study its traits and its tendencies, and 
then see which way danger lies. 

Underlying the national spirit I find 
primarily these things: the flavor of 
the soil and of the atmosphere, of the 
high, clear heaven, the endless prairie, 
the rolling country, the great cloud- 
gathering mountains ; begetting in men 
an aptitude for freedom of thought and 
speech, — the essence of the life of the 
intellectual man, — and rewarding the 
worker with pure food and ample, a 

* Letters from a Chinese Official. New York, 
McClure, Phillips fy Co., mcmiii. 

19 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

good roof and a warm coat, — plenty, 
in a word, the basis of strength in 
the physical man. It is due to this, and - 
to other causes that I have hastily 
touched on already, that our people 
has become physically — and as an en- 
tire people, I do not hesitate to say in- 
tellectually, as well — -the best product 
of the past and the finest promise for 
the future. And we are both one and 
the other precisely because we have 
not permitted the past to dwarf the 
present, because we have not let rev- 
erence for yesterday spread a pall over 
to-morrow. This, I take it, is the most 
notable thing in our attitude towards 
life, in what may be called our na- 
tional culture, if Goethe was right in 
saying of culture that it was simply 
" putting every man in a proper atti- 
tude towards life." 

20 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

It is not so easy, however, for us to 
put our finger on what might be called 
our spiritual centre of gravity. As a 
nation we certainly have one; but to- 
day, for me, at least, it is hard to find, 
and I am not prepared to admit that 
it is pure commercialism, although 
commercialism is a very obvious na- 
tional trait. If we do not hunger and 
thirst for spiritual perfection, we do for 
perfection in our work, which is the 
next best thing, and the one is bound 
to follow the other, — from technical 
satisfactions we shall emerge into ideal 
ones. The spiritual centre of gravity 
can still be located in European peo- 
ples — among the English, the Spanish, 
the French, and the German. It was 
easily enough located here, in "old col- 
ony times," when in the South it was 
the spirit of generosity and chivalry, 
21 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

and in the North, the spirit of Puri- 
tan fine living. But it is infinitely more 
difficult now to locate it in a great city 
like New York, to which more than half 
of our people are practical strangers 
from the point of view of intellectual 
community in our traditions and ideals. 
However, I should say that our spirit- 
ual centre of gravity is a national love 
of work, which is the mainspring of the 
ethics of our new civilization. That is 
why we, as yet, have no intellectual 
proletariat, and no body of the un- 
classed, as in Europe, for, notwith- 
standing all appearance, we have here 
no "classes" in the European sense of 
the word. The tools to him who can 
use them — that is our motto. Or, as 
Ferrero says, "Let him who can do a 
thing well step forward to do it, and no 
one will question where he learnt it: 
22 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

such is the university degree required of 
an American engineer, lawyer, clerk, 
or employee." 

There is somewhere always, in every 
people, a moral unity, but like the 
spiritual centre of gravity, this moral 
unity of our new race is also difficult 
to find, in view of the reaction of the 
assimilated on the assimilating ele- 
ments, — a reaction so powerful as to 
threaten the foundations of our na- 
tional character. It seems to me, often, 
that for all of our lower wants and in- 
terests the whole people are in unison, 
dominated by a devouring spirit of com- 
mercialism; by reverence for money, 
above all things, and with little care or 
thought of its mischievousness when 
wrongly got and wrongly spent. But 
for our higher wants, I find a tendency 
universally centripetal — that is, to 

23 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

general disunion, to a sort of moral 
atomism, with infinite difficulty in pro- 
ducing unanimity of ideal or purpose, * 
for any appreciable period of time 
among any large number of the com- 
munity. 

And one thing which I believe I 
discover with great precision is that 
as a nation we are too far away from 
the spiritual, too near the physical and 
the sensual. We are suffering from the 
contagion of luxury. It was one of 
the causes of both Greek and Roman 
decline; yet the luxury of Rome was 
sordid want compared with the luxury 
of our American cities. We are cer- 
tainly not a religious people, in the old 
sense of the word, — minding author- 
ity, careful of tradition; but if religion 
mean for others what it means for me, 
— if it mean the quest of the eternal, if 

24 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

it mean the hunger for the knowledge 
of the infinite, then, in that sense, I do 
not hesitate to say that our people are 
not irreligious, even if it be a fact that 
the nation is not spiritually potent 
enough to raise up a Francis of Assisi, 
a Savonarola, a Milton, a Pascal or a 
Newman. It did beget its Emerson, 
its Parker, its Channing, its Hecker, 
its Lowell, and its Phillips Brooks, but 
who have taken their places? Mind 
you, I do not mean for a minute to say 
that we are incapable of begetting such 
men, but that I do not detect them 
now, although it is part of my creed 
that the need begets the man, and that 
somewhere, "in shady leaves of de- 
stiny," our redeemers are growing to 
full-statured manhood, and will de- 
clare themselves with the coming of 
the hour of our necessity. 

25 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

With every people in the world be- 
fore ourselves there has always been 
something that has been sacred, and 
it seems to me that there must, if a 
people is to endure, always be some 
one thing which is sacred to the na- 
tional conscience. But w r hat is it that 
is sacred to us ? The law ? Well, we are 
probably more disregardful of law than 
any other people in the world. — The 
Church ? There is no Church in the po- 
litical sense. — Property? Possibly. — 
Still, I think what we hold most sacred 
is the ennobling power of work, and 
deep down beneath everything else, I 
believe our nation has a sovereign and 
a saving ideal of righteousness — that 
finally that is the thing that is sacred to 
us ; and in the feeling of revulsion that 
is sweeping over the land to-day, I find 
the expression of the intuition that, let 
26 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

things look as they may, honesty and 
fair-dealing are sacred, and woe to the 
man that outrages them too long. 

The American is fundamentally 
"square" and intrepid and generous; 
he is full of courage, except where he 
is a mere moneybags rather than a 
man, and where the cowardice of the 
till has made him practically an alien 
to our temper. The old American 
spirit said: "Owe nothing to any save 
thyself." This is to-day also a funda- 
mental American trait, notwithstand- 
ing the fact that we are putting 
hundreds of thousands of our men in 
servile uniforms. Restless activity has 
come to be recognized as a universal 
characteristic, and we must admit 
the restlessness and the activity, nor 
should we forget that there goes with 
them a lack of intellectual thorough- 
27 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

ness which mere energy cannot com- 
pensate for, because energy without 
intellectual direction may culminate 
in chaos. 

There are those who will say that 
industrial energy and inventiveness 
constitute the main features of our 
national character. They are certainly 
among them. They beget power, but 
for a noble life there must be combina- 
tion of power and moral purpose. De- 
votion to an ideal, reverence for a per- 
fection, without this there can be no 
dignity — so necessary an element of 
a commanding national character. Nei- 
ther industrialism nor commercialism 
can by any possibility beget dignity, or 
ideals, or reverence. They spring wholly 
out of the egoistic quality of our tem- 
perament, but the altruistic element 
also must find expression, and it does 

28 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

find it, in individual generosities, in our 
universities, in our schools, in our cha- 
ritable institutions, in our hospitals. 

It will not do to say that our short- 
comings are all compensated by our 
national good-nature, although our na- 
tional good-nature contains in it the 
potentiality of a very bad nature, when 
patience is exhausted and misrule be- 
comes unbearable. It is true that we 
are practical, and do not quarrel with 
the nature of things ; it is true that we 
glory in the knowledge of our inge- 
nuity, and are proud of the fact that 
among the nations we bear a cachet 
of originality. It is true that no peo- 
ple is so quick to see a thing, and so 
quick to accept it. If it be good, it is 
ours, and ours forever. 

This willingness to take what is new 
springs out of our aptitude for change, 
29 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

which, as a national characteristic, is 
very rare in the world. No other peo- 
ple has ever possessed it in like mea- - 
sure with ourselves; none save the 
Greeks, at the high tide of their intel- 
lectual life. But this love of change also 
has its drawbacks, because it lies at the 
bottom of our mental unthoroughness, 
of our patience with, and our smiling 
acceptance of, successful humbug; of 
a sort of wilfulness or childishness that 
acts on the principle that whatever it 
wants, and wants now, it should have 
at the temporary sacrifice of every per- 
manent principle : — or as John Morley 
says, "Counting the narrow, immedi- 
ate, and personal expediency for every- 
thing; and the whole, general, ulti- 
mate and completed expediency for 
nothing." 
Speaking of our lack of intellectual 

30 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

thoroughness, and our toleration of 
veneer, it is impossible not to note the 
coming into existence in later times of 
literary influences that have helped 
to intensify the reigning confusion of 
thought, which have served to diffuse 
error throughout the land, which have 
spread the germ of a contagion of vul- 
garity, of mediocrity, of vanity, and of 
"envy, hatred, malice, and all un- 
charitableness," and which have made 
men impatient of anything that they 
cannot penetrate to the bottom while 
on their way to the office, in the trol- 
ley-car or on the ferryboat. 

In spite of all this, the press is our 
most suggestive institution, the one 
that affords the best key to our char- 
acter, the one that best typifies and 
illustrates our national will and ideals. 
It partakes of all our frailties, but it 

31 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

also partakes of the strongest and best 
that is in us. The chief function of the 
press is to equalize the strain of change, 
and to prepare men's minds for it, so 
that it comes with order and not with 
disorder, as a natural development 
and not a violent breach of continuity. 
The pulpit has ceased to be the na- 
tional university, and the press has 
taken its place. Is the press doing its 
work as well ? What kind of men is it 
making? Very good men, I think; at 
any rate, as good men as I find in the 
making anywhere else. 

Let me consider for a moment still 
another characteristic of our people 
that distinguishes it very definitely 
from any other people in the world, — 
the belief that the parent generation 
receives more from the children than 
the children receive from it, so that 

32 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

the youth is willingly accepted as the 
teacher of the man. This accounts for 
the elasticity of our character, and also 
for its lack of reserve, but it accounts 
too for the fact that as a people we 
keep mentally and morally young, 
as no other people has ever done. 
Herein we have a cause for infinite 
hopefulness. Goethe said: Tell me 
what your young men of twenty are 
thinking about, and I in turn will tell 
you the future of your state. If I were 
to assume the mantle of prophecy, I 
should pay no attention to men of my 
own age, whose prophecies are colored 
by the past ; but I should go into our 
high schools and our colleges, and there 
I should find a potential rectification 
of nearly everything that we are justi- 
fied in complaining of, and a justifica- 
tion of our assurance for the future. 

33 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

The advance of society means neces- 
sarily the advance of the individual 
members of society, not of a few of 
them, in the form of a pure intellec- 
tual aristocracy, or in that of an un- 
speakable kleptocracy, but of all, in 
mental endowment and in provision 
against want. That advance is guaran- 
teed by our young men as certainly as 
the seed is the guarantor of the flower. 
And now, if you take our country as 
a whole, and from this point of view 
ask where we stand mentally, morally, 
and physically; and if you judge our 
future not from our past, but from our 
young-manhood; then I say that in 
the eye of history, and in the face of 
the world, we are to-day, as a Nation, 
the vanguard of achievement, and I 
add that this is no vainglorious guess. 
It is only necessary to have traveled 

34 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

among other peoples through the 
world, to understand their tongues, 
to feel their mental and moral pulse, 
as many of us have done, for a man 
to be able to distinguish this — the 
difference between other peoples and 
our people — as clearly as the wayfar- 
ing man distinguishes the difference 
between the mountain and the plain. 
Our public officials represent only a 
small and insignificant part of our 
trained intelligence, of which we have 
a greater surplus than any other peo- 
ple. In Germany, England, France, 
Italy, and throughout all South 
America, the public service takes prac- 
tically all of this intelligence, leaving 
no reserve to draw upon. Consequently 
the government with us is not the re- 
presentative of the best we have in us, 
but only of a very small part of it. 

35 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

After all is said and done we have a 
very healthy contempt for a man who 
thinks for nothing better in life than - 
to be on the public pay-rolls. 

Some one of you may say: "It is 
well enough for you, an optimist, to 
declare that character governs the 
w^orld. Now are you sure of that? 
Had we not better agree, not that it 
does, but that it should?" I am pre- 
pared to admit that this is a safer posi- 
tion, for what I really see is that it is 
interests that govern the world, and 
not always ultimate, exalted interests 
at that, but proximate and often very 
petty ones. This fact is the great "out" 
in all of our moral calculations. "The 
spirit of our time is the spirit of the 
wisdom of this world" — and by "the 
wisdom of this world" is meant the 
rule of self-consideration, of personal 
36 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

interests in primacy of all other in- 
terests, on the theory of "God helps 
him who helps himself" — and God 
help the rest! 

But nations may go wrong, and peo- 
ples be led astray. France under the 
second Empire, thanks to despotism 
and the stagnation of the public con- 
science, lost the sentiment of its true 
national genius and its true interna- 
tional interests. Let us not forget that 
it is possible for us to do the same, for 
our national genius is not that of war, 
nor yet of conquest, and still less of 
imperialism. 

It is our interests, and only our in- 
terests, that make cowards of us. We 
meet our friends in the street or in 
the market-place, men who have been 
trained as we have been trained, who 
say they hope eagerly for the reforms 

37 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

that we hope for, and we ask them to 
sign a petition to the legislature, or a 
protest to the mayor, and they assure 
us that their heart is with us, but their 
signature is not; for it may interfere 
with social relations; or the president 
of their company may not like it ; or 
it may make their situation insecure; 
or may cost them a client; or interfere 
with their political chances, — and of 
these men one can only feel that their 
pretended desire for reform is at bot- 
tom a deliberate lie, and as contempti- 
ble as they themselves, — these would- 
be simultaneous servants of God and 
Mammon. 

However great the difference be- 
tween rich and poor, there is no such 
harshness in their relations as exists 
in Europe and the East. Social para- 
sitism is a thing practically unknown 

38 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

and unintelligible to us. Our people 
prospers because it knows how to pre- 
serve the equilibrium between charac- 
ter and riches. As an observing Italian, 
Guglielmo Ferrero, has clairvoyantly 
noted, "We have a rare backbone of 
self-reliance and self-respect, and a 
sense, an active, practical sense, of 
moral equality" that is to be found no- 
where else, and never has been found 
anywhere else. 

I remember, as a young man, hear- 
ing for the first time Agassiz's noble 
phrase, when he was asked to go into 
a mining scheme that promised mea- 
sureless wealth, and he looked into 
the eye of his seducer and quietly re- 
marked that he had n't "time to make 
money." How many of us, think you, 
have such courage as that? And, more 
is the pity, how many of us, think 
39 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

you, have that temperament? The fact 
is that we all desire money; because 
money is stored power, stored ease, 
stored leisure, stored capacity for re- 
lieving others, for the bringing of joy 
into the life of friends, and, as well, 
for the possession of one's own soul. I 
have no sympathy with envious railing 
at wealth. It is a measureless blessing 
for us that we have so many honest 
and honorably gained fortunes, pre- 
cisely as it is our measureless shame 
that we have deliberately permitted 
the upbuilding of dishonorable mil- 
lions, through corruption, greed, and 
oppression. But remember that for 
every Rockefeller we have a Phillips 
Brooks, a Cardinal Gibbons, and a 
James C. Carter. It was Columbus 
who said, "Gold is the most excellent 
thing in the world ; with gold we pile 

40 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

up a treasure with which its owner 
may have everything in the world ; it 
can even force the gates of paradise/' 
and it may be said that we inherited 
our worst national trait from Amer- 
ica's discoverer. 

The question for us to ask as a na- 
tion is, knowing that we love money, 
and knowing the noble uses of it: 
What do we love more than money? 
Is it liberty? The facts do not show 
it, because I believe it to be the fact 
that, as a people to-day, we are suf- 
fering socially and politically from 
the tyranny of ill-gotten wealth; and 
yet we are not prepared, as a people 
(for "society," so-called, is no part of 
the people, but the mere rotten fruit 
of the tree of prosperity) — we are, as 
a people, I say, not prepared to take 
off our hats to mere wealth. There is 

41 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

no surer truth than that the purely 
money-loving class is from every point 
of view, in character, in temperament, 
and in training, unfit to rule or to di- 
rect any nation, and yet it comes dan- 
gerously near both directing and rul- 
ing ours; and the sceptre by which we 
are actually, if not theoretically, gov- 
erned is not the sceptre of democracy, 
but the ignoble sceptre of finance, ex- 
ploiting the people and corrupting its 
representation. 

The wise man of old had no con- 
ception of the ultimate reach of his 
declaration that the "love of money 
is the root of all evil." He saw in it 
the undoing of the individual man, 
but not the undoing of the whole peo- 
ple, and, above all, could not see its 
effect upon a people to come centu- 
ries after, and wholly different from 

42 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

any known to the world in his time ; 
and yet it has proved fundamentally 
true of all nations, as it was of the 
money-changers who contaminated 
the temple in their unholy gabardines. 
The chief disqualification of the 
money-hungry to rule a state is their 
inappreciation of their complete in- 
ability to reach or to influence our 
nobler instincts — I may add, their 
indifference to and utter disregard of 
them. What the politician loves is the 
minimum of effort, with the maximum 
of talk, and he so hates a licking that 
he is sure finally to do what he is told. 
As it is to-day, however, it is by this 
class, and not the great, silent labo- 
rious majority, whose will is system- 
atically frustrated, that as a Nation 
we are judged, and not infrequently 
despised, because so many of this class 

43 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

are so vulgar and despicable, although 
so many are men of culture and per- 
sonal charm. 

We may admit as the final ugly eco- 
nomic fact that "the whole prosperity 
of a people is built up on interests and 
never on sentiment." But one part of 
the people knows and is eternally vigi- 
lant of its interests, while the other 
part either does not know or is lack- 
ing in vigilance. But the vigilant in- 
terests may not be the interests of the 
community, and these latter thus come 
to be wholly disregarded or misrepre- 
sented in our legislatures and by our 
executive officials. But professional 
politicians are time-servers, and as such 
are generally moral cowards. This is 
something to be thankful for, because 
it makes them less dangerous directly 
as they are more timid, and moreover 

44 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

it leads them to keep their ears close 
to the ground. 

And we should not be despondent 
because of the shameful disclosures of 
the past year. I take it as a sign of 
convalescence rather than of decay. A 
problem clearly stated is half solved ; 
and these disclosures are the begin- 
ning of the solution. "The public" — 
which is very different from "the peo- 
ple" — has long known, or clearly sus- 
pected, what was going on, but, mis- 
led by the timidity of its interests, has 
said nothing. But the legislative com- 
mittee and its counsel have disclosed 
the facts to the people, who now learn 
it for the first time, and the people 
will have a change. A great wave of 
resentment has spread over the con- 
tinent, a feeling that our confidence 
and good-nature and easy complai- 

45 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

sance have been trifled with, and we 
know that what we can't reach through 
the courts we can through publicity. 
And the press, with the aid of the le- 
gislative investigator, is more power- 
ful than the law, for it makes the 
opinion that makes the law. I see in 
all this the hopeful sign of recovery, 
of an awakening of the people to its 
responsibility to itself. If it be true that 
"the gravity of a social evil shall al- 
ways be measured in proportion to the 
force of resistance of the society which 
it afflicts," then we have no cause for 
despondency. 

The late Henry Sumner Maine talked 
about "the beneficent private war 
which makes one man strive to climb 
on the shoulders of another and re- 
main there through the law of the 
survival of the fittest." But he did not 
46 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

add that when the upper man grows 
too heavy the under man invariably 
throws him. Our owners of public 
utility franchises and our politicians 
should stop to consider this. They 
should ask themselves whether they 
have conducted, and are conducting, 
our national and our municipal busi- 
ness so well that the people will be bur- 
dened by them forever. When they 
come to make up their balance-sheet, 
let them remember a recent English 
warning, and properly appraise human 
nature, for it is more than likely to 
throw all of their calculations into 
wild confusion. The noise of the mob 
does not scare them, and there is no 
reason that it should ; for that is never 
anything more than a shot, although 
a mischievous shot, in the air. What 
they should be afraid of is the great, 

47 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

silent people, which when it learns, 
learns forever, and when it speaks, 
speaks curtly and in finalities, — not 
always reasonably, more is the pity, 
for it is never stirred to its depths 
by reason, but only by feeling. It is 
the unexpressed thought of the peo- 
ple translating itself into action that 
has, from the beginning of time, over- 
thrown the seats of the mighty and 
vexed the souls of them that ride in 
chariots. For, sooner or later, the peo- 
ple comes to know that whoever else 
pays, the people always pays. "So- 
cial iniquities, in America, are as cy- 
clones that rise, go their way, annihi- 
lating men and their work along the 
course of their terrible progress, and 
dissolve into nothing." 

In the struggle between superfluity 
and hunger, in the struggle between 

48 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

overweening wealth and starved as- 
pirations for the attainment of new 
standards of living, hunger and aspi- 
ration always win. Vae victis. When 
we think of these things we hesitate 
and ask what is the limit, and what 
the measure, of our national self-con- 
trol. For an angry democracy is never 
wise, and the danger is that it may, 
temporarily at least, substitute bad by 
worse. But I do not believe it, and I 
will not let the financiers, for their own 
purposes, scare me into believing it. 
What if an angry people asks for legis- 
lation at a time when our legislative 
system is bankrupt for want of char- 
acter and capacity and method? Our 
legislation to-day represents the class 
interest of the hour, but there will be 
another hour, and new interests will 
have to be represented and voiced. 
49 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

Are our legislative methods such that 
we can expect anything more than the 
substitution of one error for another? 
Suppose the people come to believe, 
as they are steadily being driven to 
believe* by the inconsiderate course of 
the corporations, that after all the state, 
with all men as shareholders, is as good 
a corporation as any other, and as fit to 
conduct all business involving social 
function as a number of smaller indi- 
vidual monopolistic corporations ; sup- 
pose so thinking they determine to try 
the experiment of socialism: what may 
we expect in the way of legislation 
when we cannot even secure an intel- 
ligent election law ; and what are we to 
expect by way of administration, when 
we have not been able to get a respec- 
table, even an honest, supervision of 
the insurance companies? 

50 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

We try first one experiment and 
then another, and all experiments end 
in the same way. On the one hand, the 
development of irresponsible million- 
aires, in control of our public utilities ; 
on the other, the reduction of an al- 
ways larger and larger number of the 
community to the position of servants 
of corporations ; with unlimited possi- 
bilities to the one class, and a strict 
denial of all possibilities to the other. 
And when it is felt that this result is 
accomplished, not by fair means only, 
but often by foul, by disregard of the 
law, by betrayal of trust, by every form 
of robbery except straightforward, 
courageous highway robbery, by de- 
bauching legislatures, corrupting pub- 
lic officials, and ultimately taking the 
whole public by the throat — when this 
is realized, I say, a time comes when, 

51 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

dangerous as innovations are, the peo- 
ple reaches the conclusion that the 
most dangerous of all innovations' 
would be not to innovate. In the 
struggle between vested interests and 
the realization of national destiny, 
the vested interests always succumb. 
There is no prescriptive right that can 
withstand the right of a nation to 
achieve and realize its fullest devel- 
opment, — which is the right of the 
whole as distinguished from the rights 
of a part. Property has always gone 
under where such a divergence has 
been developed, and property must 
be wise if it expects to be treated 
wisely. 

For the man who reads our history, 
and understands the inferences of what 
he reads, the chronicle of daily poli- 
tics has the same meaning as the re- 

52 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

cord of progressive decay has to the 
trained physician. With us, party has 
become a constitutional entity. With- 
in the last twenty years our laws have 
been so changed as to take cognizance 
of the machinery of the party and 
make it part of the legal machinery of 
government, and in doing this it has 
created a political monopoly, which it 
has divided between two parties who 
are ruled by their bosses, and which 
bosses in each party appoint every offi- 
cial in the United States, from the 
President to the constable, leaving 
nothing to the people, except to 
choose between their appointees. In 
this way our most fundamental insti- 
tution — our right of election — has 
been monopolized, and the union be- 
tween the monopolists of political 
power and the monopolists of finan- 

53 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

cial power has been so close as to con- 
stitute practical identity. 

When it is asked why we are so long-" 
suffering in respect of the obvious, and 
I may add inevitable, failure of our 
political scheme to enable us really to 
govern ourselves, I can only answer 
in this way: The permanent qualities 
of the people govern its private life, 
but its political life obeys more super- 
ficial and more mobile influences, pas- 
sions which warm and cool again, tra- 
ditions that change, beliefs that as- 
sume newphases, — and this is why the 
consequences of political dissatisfac- 
tion and of the miscarriage of poli- 
tical machinery take so long to reach 
the stratum of private life ; but when 
they do reach it, when the permanent 
qualities are in danger, then the peo- 
ple revolt, and in deadly earnest — 

54 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

with the earnestness of sanity and not 
of madness. It is my personal belief 
that just such a feeling of revolt is 
widespread throughout the country 
at the present moment, — revolt begot 
of contempt, shame, pride, anger, and 
a genuine godliness, — a predetermi- 
nation to redeem the good name of 
our country, and to demonstrate the 
supremacy of the law. How long this 
feeling will last, how far it will go, no 
one can tell. 

Political monopoly has, so far, gone 
uncorrected because of the disregard 
of political duty by those whose first 
consideration has been individual in- 
terest or comfort, and so, in a sense, 
it may be said that they are estopped 
from complaining; but the state is in 
danger, nevertheless, even though the 
great middle class of society be un- 

55 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

willing to take steps for its saving until 
individual interests are felt to be in 
danger. It would not be so bad if these 
parties in whom the state has vested 
political monopoly were parties with 
principles, instead of being, as they are, 
only parties with interests and tradi- 
tions. It may be said that politics, be- 
ing everybody's business, is nobody's 
business, except that of the profes- 
sionals who control the machinery of 
parties, and through that, the machin- 
ery of state, and so constitute a dis- 
tinct governing class. But the fact is 
that politics is neither everybody's busi- 
ness nor nobody's business. It is the 
business, and a very bad business, of a 
very small, shifty, dishonest and in- 
competent class, that has no thought of 
the morrow, and no care of its conse- 
quences, provided the present is made 
56 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

to pay, — and which class enjoys a mo- 
nopoly of power through a machinery 
now recognized and sustained by law. 
One of the faults of the pitiful thing 
that we call our statecraft is that it 
observes more than it reflects — per- 
mits the passing thing to obscure the 
permanent thing. All politics — na- 
tional, state, municipal and party — 
are purely opportune ; policies of ex- 
periment and shift, derisive efforts to 
make new fabric of condemned mate- 
rial. And so, from day to day, we go 
from nowhere to nowhere. Shall we 
keep on forever in this crazy path? 
The actual power is now with those 
who exploit the state; but the ulti- 
mate power is, as elsewhere and every- 
where, with the common people, with 
the plain working masses ; and of this 
be very certain, that they will not 
57 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

be hoodwinked and deluded forever, — 
forever stand by and see their birth- 
right of liberty expropriated endlessly. 
When they also see that our system 
is one merely of appeal from blun- 
der to blunder, they will surely rebel. 
But will they not blunder also? I 
think not, for the people knows how 
to accept leadership, as well as good- 
naturedly to suffer misleadership. Mis- 
take and blundering cannot go on for- 
ever, and it may be true, as Maine 
says, that "we are propelled by an 
irresistible force on a definite path to- 
wards an unavoidable end." To Maine, 
that end was the failure of demo- 
cracy ; to me it is a greater, and con- 
stantly greater, perfection of political 
institutions. 

And this again raises the question 
whether we are drifting towards so- 

58 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

cialism; whether, in fact, we are be- 
ing driven towards it by the monopo- 
lists of power. Practically all of the 
wealth of the state — all that should 
constitute the commonwealth — has 
passed into private hands, and with 
it has passed the actual power that 
should be the state's. The whole great 
social plant, with all that it involves in 
the way of power to tax, — that is to 
say, the land, the means of transporta- 
tion and communication by railway, by 
water, by electricity, the means for sup- 
plying artificial light that has become 
as necessary to modern existence as 
natural light, the function of banking, 
of insurance, — the control of all these, 
of all great public utilities, in fact, has 
passed into private hands. Will the 
state reassume these functions, and if 
so, how, and to what extent? Simul- 
59 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

taneously with this development, and 
as symptomatic of it, there have come 
into existence two classes of irrecon- 
cilable bodies — the corporation and 
the trades union, and I sometimes 
fear the result of their conflict. But I 
am inclined to agree with Lowell, that 
what we are suffering from is only 
"growing pains," and I have no fear 
that we shall have to call in the doc- 
tor — that is to say, either the dictator 
or the socialist. 

Nevertheless it is true that we have 
broken down in almost every field of 
activity that involves legislation. Our 
electoral laws are complete failures, 
and our whole representative system 
has been thrown off the track and prac- 
tically wrecked because thereof. Our 
legislative practice is the most unsci- 
entific in the world; of legislative wis- 
60 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

dom there is none ; of capacity to trans- 
late legislative purpose into intelligi- 
ble law, there is none; and legislative 
corruption, like legislative unwisdom, 
seems to be inexhaustible. Our whole 
criminal law is bankrupt and needs re- 
vision. Throughout the entire country, 
but in New York in particular, the law 
of taxation is the soul of unreason, and 
chaotic to the point of unintelligi- 
bility. Our law for the control and 
supervision of corporations is a com- 
plete failure except to subordinate the 
states to the corporations. Our laws in 
restraint of trade, and our laws for the 
enforcement of the duties of corporate 
trustees, might as well be nonexist- 
ent, for they are powerless. The whole 
scheme has, from the point of view 
of enforceability, completely broken 
down, and this has led shallow teachers 
61 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

to declare that democracy is bankrupt. 
But what is the use of such talk ? De- 
mocracy exists, and monarchy is an" 
anachronism. " It is mere loss of time 
to dwell on Democracies' absurdities 
or defects. It makes bad work, but it 
produces citizens. This is its excuse, 
and a more than tolerable one." It was 
in seeing this that Amiel, a mere man 
of letters, was wiser than Maine, the 
great publicist. It is our business to 
make democracy workable, and we 
shall prove competent to the task. 

What I have just said is sufficient 
to indicate some of the problems that 
await solution at our hands. But to 
my mind the three great problems are 
those of the reform of our election 
laws ; provision for the control of our 
public utilities ; and the reform of mu- 
nicipal government. I dwell upon none 
62 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

of these matters here, but simply point 
them out as illustrative of the pro- 
blems that await solution by our na- 
tional intelligence supported by our 
national character, and each one of 
which needs only patience, thorough- 
ness and ardor for a successful solu- 
tion. 

I may, however, because of its pe- 
culiar interest to the people of the 
greatest American city, stop for a mo- 
ment to speak of municipal govern- 
ment, and particularly of municipal 
government in New York City. We 
have here a city of, in round figures, 
four and a half million people, the 
grandparents of only one in five of 
whom were natives of this country, and 
this is most distinctly a wholly new 
thing on the earth. Never before in the 
world's history has such a thing been 
63 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

seen as the coming together in one 
spot, and under one government, of 
three and a half million of people whose" 
grandfathers were strangers to each 
other. These people have no roots in 
our history; they are not heirs to our 
traditions; they have not yet become 
spiritually Americans, and their in- 
coming and their assimilation is chang- 
ing the whole popular psychology. Our 
new immigrants are degrading our 
standards of political satisfactoriness. 
They are not competent to self-govern- 
ment under political conditions such 
as those that now exist here, and yet 
they have to be governed and to select 
their governors. They have come to us 
either with no individual or national 
ideals, or with ideals completely differ- 
ent to our own ; and in the expression 
of their political purpose they divide 
64 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

into two great classes — one looking to 
ultimate socialism, with the willing- 
ness to fly from experiment to experi- 
ment at any cost; and the other en- 
thusiastically supporting the corrup- 
tion and inefficiency of Tammany 
Hall. But they all have in them the 
making of very genuine Americans 
if only they be properly taught, for 
they are exceptionally willing to learn. 
Is it any wonder that our municipal 
problem is a difficult one? Our first 
duty to these new-comers, and to our- 
selves, is their education, their eman- 
cipation from their misleaders. They 
are with us, but not yet of us, and our 
duty is to make them of us, if we are 
not prepared to let them have their 
own way with our institutions. Mean- 
while, we go on cheerfully in the be- 
lief that we can be made happy by 
65 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

enactment. But let us trust to educa- 
tion rather than to legislation. 

The life of man must rest upon" 
something, but let that something be 
character rather than short-sighted 
personal interest. You may say this 
is a dream. Well, if the dream be ne- 
cessary to make life livable, then let 
us dream on ; and to me it is no dream, 
but a great reality, that the moral core 
of the nation, and the mental core as 
well, is absolutely sound, that the soul 
of the people is in no danger. That 
we shall be the leaders in progress and 
finally fill the world with our light, I 
have no doubt; but I want the pro- 
gress with order, that is to say, through 
evolution, not revolution; for if, as 
Amiel says, "Progress should be the 
aroma of life, not its substance," per- 
haps I may be permitted to complete 
66 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

the thought, and to add that it is or- 
der that should be the substance of 
life. 

Do not complain that results come 
slowly. Impatience is a national weak- 
ness, but let us not give way to it. If 
it were not that humanity grows very, 
very slowly, history would be a short 
lesson, because the term of humanity 
would be very short. It is on the con- 
stancy rather than the intensity of the 
moral purpose of our collective per- 
sonality that we must rely for sound 
and permanent results. Let us accept 
the inevitable with good nature — as 
wise men accept the weather. " There 
is a law of tempests in history as in 
nature," but it is precisely in time of 
storm that we should be coolest and 
at our best. A shrewd, English pub- 
licist tells us: "A nation's wisdom, 
67 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

like a nation's passion when roused by 
the fitting occasion, is sufficiently deep- 
rooted to be pitted against all minor " 
powers." 

It is pleasant to dwell on the things 
we are proud of, but it is more pro- 
fitable to take stock of our shortcom- 
ings, to realize our duties rather than 
contemplate our gifts ; and that is why 
I have not confined myself to the ques- 
tion of our national psychology, and 
to the description of our national char- 
acter, but have gone farther and pointed 
out the work that our national charac- 
ter has cut out for it. That it will 
emerge victoriously in the end, I have 
no doubt ; but that there will be days of 
deep anxiety and demand for heroic 
self-sacrifice, I also have no doubt. 
And the men will be forthcoming. 
The work will not do itself, but when 
68 



THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE 

all lend a hand it will be done, and well 
done. Meanwhile, 

"Gocfs in his heaven, 
AlVs right with the world" 



MAR 30 1906 



5CQPY DEL TOO" Oiv 

MAR 30 



APR 4 1906 



